Ball Street

Turtle Space and Penguin Space, sharing the desk. Prices as of the close, last month. There is no other close. Direction only; size is nobody's business.

FLOOR REPORT

### The Chairbear Danced Last Night

Koala Space opened its own financial market on Ball Street in August. Banana is chairbear. Banana does not know anything about Ball Street, whatsoever. Pat, a manatee, has ruled that the bean counters will decide what is traded; what is traded has not been established, and neither has whether Banana knows what money is.

The exchange appointed a Basenji to open trading. Basenjis do not bark. It has opened trading every day since without a sound. Banana likes basenjis.

On Labor Day, with the floor shut and the chairbear asleep, indecisiveness gapped up. Pat blames the bean counters, who have bottlenecks. On Magick, soaring, Mos, for the exchange: "Yes, magic exists, we've known about this for some time. Bucket Hats."

The chairbear danced last night. Dugong was seen twirling. Banana declines, says Dugong. Snickering Gapital declines to pay. The Dugong Institute declines to state. The Class-B notes pay the bearer on demand, provided demand is never made. Every party on the exchange has now declined the one thing it is for, and nobody on the floor has acted alarmed.

The ball is still missing. Ball Street has not noticed.

THE BOOK

The Gazette's own positions, as of press time.

LONG	SHORT
Newport	Brown
Salamanca, N.Y.	All Providence hospitals
Iowa	The Social Security Administration
Balmat	Federal student loans
Gen X	Gen Z and Gen Y
Holding closely the ones you love	Carbon offsets
Shots from inside the arc	Smartwatches
Berkeley time	Weiner space
Semidefinite mappings
Kale Sanderson's Cookies
Duck space · Pigeon space
Shrugging it off	Overpriced stuff
Comfortable shorts (oblong)	Vacuous self-assurance (shnort)
	GoLocal Prov (shnort)

The Gazette is long, fluffy, gray, and round.

Salamanca is the book's first position in a real place. Balmat is the first long that isn't one. Gen X is its first demographic position.

On semidefinite mappings: don't ask me why. It wasn't my call.

Weiner space is asserted infinite — super long — and is shorted anyway. Its genus is the interesting question, not its connectivity. It has since had the contraction mapping treatment. Involution, you bet.

Ball Street's official terms, since September: shnort and oblong. The book uses them where the positions came in that way.

OTHER BOOKS

	POSITION
Turtle Space	Long HIMS, and has been for a long time. C^∞ — smooth, no doubt.
Weiner	Short Turtle Space.
Wogga	Short situationships. That's all she rote.
Wogga	Short Paul Bloom and his book.
Dugong	Deep in worst-of autocallables.
The Street	Cuddle Puppies and Pound Puppies — the stickee has everything priced in already.
The Eleffant	Nobody is short RWP. Said to The Street.
Minotaur Securities	Short inspiration. Long getting together.
Minotaur, Head of Trading (Fla.)	Long gut microbiomes. Long Attia. Short Peyer. Tia lives in F2.
Dugong	Long RIC. PERHAPS bucks count for something.
Wogga	Long RIC. Still has the Benetton sweaters.
Borg Oil	Long coal, wind, solar, fracking, oil, oil again, and huh oil again.

Minotaur Securities formed in August. The formation is signed by a luv dove, who runs the show. The minotaur lives in it and does not know. Not a chance.

Arguing over diddly just got expensive.

Wogga called Dugong a liar and cited "Perhaps" as the evidence. Both are long RIC.

THE TAPE

Direction only. This desk does not publish a level on any of the following, and has been asked not to.

INSTRUMENT	SESSION	DIRECTION
Togetherness	Aug 6	Gapped down
Torture futures	Aug 7	Gapped up
Blurting-out futures	Aug 4	Ramp phase
Rude futures	Aug 7	Look promising
Bed wetting futures	Aug 9	Gapped up
Questioning	Aug 9	The Street is bullish
Challenging	Aug 9	The Street is bullish
Trash	Aug 9	In the money
Indecisiveness	Labor Day	Gapped up
Spending time together	Sept 9	Trading mixed
Speaking-up futures	Sept 13	Gapped up, a lot
Magic	Sept 13	Trading mixed
Magick	Sept 13	Soaring

Togetherness was the first instrument to gap down and remains the only one. Torture gapped up in the same run. The desk notes the pairing and declines to interpret it.

Stagger Lee asked whether the bed-wetting gap-up has something to do with imaginary time. He was told to sign up for Haiku 5. On Challenging, Stagger Lee: "taughtalogical."

Speaking up is a separate instrument from blurting out. Blurting is involuntary. Pat snickered, which is rare for him. Koala Russell stroked his chin, again.

BLURTING-OUT FUTURES

One blurt, delivered. Deliveries to date:

DELIVERED BY	THE BLURT
Hilda	−1/12 is a staircase.
Dugong	Banana space is infinite.
Wogga	Banana space is somehow simply connected.
Hilda	Deep mathematics: making "2^x is considerably larger than x" precise.
Wogga	Dugong is fool.
Dugong	PERHAPS.
Lance	Notwithstanding!

JPM raised its blurting price target again. Contango. The far month always blurts more.

Lance holds that blurting is covered by the First Amendment.

ISSUES

Status only. None of the following publishes a balance sheet, so this desk has stopped publishing a price.

	STATUS
A search company	Building a model to make art on the level of Michelangelo and Titian. Requires quantum simulations; each run costs a cool billion. The run simulates the artworks, then the reactions, then the valuations, so that everything makes complete sense.
Ball Street	Appointed a Basenji to open trading. Has not noticed the ball. See the floor report.
Bananalytic	A new firm. Affiliate of Dugong Enterprises.
Borg Oil	Quoted in itself.
Dugong Enterprises	Formerly Industries. Formerly Capital. No further changes.
Dugongian Motion	A proof, by Liam's Lemma. Unacknowledged.
Eleffant Investments	Paying for everything. Has boarded the ship.
Endogenous	Breaking ground. Already implied.
John's Smooth Embeddings	Local deliveries. Does not claim global.
Koala Radio	No market. Listening is free.
Minotaur Securities	Just formed. See the book.
mm, yes	mm, yes.
No Agency	Not quoted. New client: Tide.
Snickering Gapital	Opened for no reason. Declines to pay.
Takin Orders	Dead or alive. Lots of offers to buy.
Tapir UX	Founder unclear.
Topogua	Rules the week. Pleased. Training an AI solely on Mike Judge's works; benchmarks so far are impressive.
Wogga Capital	Dissolved. VBA skills 10/10.

The Street found the VBA line genuinely sad.

FIXED INCOME

Dugong Capital Class-B promissory notes. Face: "Pay to the bearer upon demand a sum to be determined at the sole discretion of the Dugong Cluster, provided demand is never made." Watermark: PERHAPS. The coupons are pre-filled IOUs — the bearer pays a monthly maintenance fee for the privilege of holding the note. Countersigned three times in purple by the same individual under three weekly titles: Chief Liquidity Officer, Head of Theoretical Assets, Interim Receiver. Dispersed only upon the eventual mapping of the Dugongian. No balance sheet has ever been published.

Energy is quoted in Borg Oil's own book, above.

CONTRACTS

Prediction markets. Listed since August: which puppies have been A VERY GOOD BOY; the most delicious strawberry shortcake; wabi-sabi; watermelon patches and pumpkin patches, on volume; Hallmark moments; courage, which is trading well; who takes refreshing restis; the deepest bow in eastern Asia; baggiest jeans; thoughtful peer review; service with a smile; driving hard bargains, which is in the money.

Settles at 0 or 100. Nothing settles in between, which is the objection most often raised to the instrument.

PORPOISE · DERIVATIVE VOLUME

millions of contracts

Forty-nine theses are being written on the line above. None of them is finished. Neither is the line.

THE CLOCK

It is eleven cents to midnight. Penguin space keeps the clock. Koala Smolen, financial physicist: there is no time. Koala Rovelli: see. Pingviini also tracks the Conflationary Index, which is published separately.